


let’s talk about how what you call sliding carefully is seriously slipping out of control

by johniaurens



Series: this love will never be convenient [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/johniaurens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They come to him right before he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let’s talk about how what you call sliding carefully is seriously slipping out of control

**Author's Note:**

> violence tag for some light gore + offscreen murder + a lot of blood. also a rabbit is killed. title's from tattooed tears by the front bottoms. this was strangely satisfying to write.

They come to him on a Sunday night just outside of the bar he's just managed to crawl out of before his limbs lost feeling and left him for dead in the snow. 

“Up,” says a voice like bells. John's limbs don't agree. He stays down. Bells again, _ting ting ting_. John, with very little effort, shuts the sound out and floats. He's almost gone, he knows from the way his body doesn't ache anymore. It's not a bad place to die – the lights don't quite reach where he's lying but it's not too dark. Gentle light shines through his closed eyelids. He'd flutter his eyelashes but he's just – so tired. It feels like he's swimming in milk, somehow, warm with the mix of hypothermia and blood loss. Alcohol poisoning, maybe. A good place to be. 

There's a hard kick to his side, and John's body goes with it, limp. The motion comes to him in slow motion. His head hits something, a blunt object ache that doesn't have time to turn into a dull throb before he loses his consciousness. 

They come to him on a Sunday night. 

They come to him right before he dies.

-

The house is dark. His head also feels dark, filled with cotton puffs.

“He's awake,” says a voice from behind him. No, that's not right – no one spoke. The voice came from everywhere in the house and nowhere at all at the same time. The hairs at the back of his neck stand up. 

“Ooh, he's pretty.” Another voice – sharper, more concentrated, from somewhere to his left. He wants to turn his head but it's too heavy. 

Soft hands on his face. John closes his eyes, swallows. It hurts. Everything hurts. His lungs feel heavy, an after-drowning feeling. The same as after his father pulled him out of the lake the summer he turned fourteen, the heavy-empty ache, the “breathe, Jacky, breathe” a sharp sound against the birds and the waves. His father almost punctured his lung, the doctors told him later. Came real close. Broke his ribs trying to jump-start his heart, almost killed him. There's a metaphor in that but John's too tired to come up with anything meaningful. 

Another pair of hands on him. John fights his eyes open and wishes he hadn't. 

Needle-sharp smile. White teeth. White white white white against the darkness. _Vampire teeth_ , thinks John immediately. His blood runs cold in his veins. His bruises throb. The boy in front of him with his teeth and his black hair and jet bead eyes is beautiful. Beautiful. Dangerous. Beautiful. Not human. John's pulse hammers in his throat. 

Teeth on the side of his neck, light like a promise. Curly hair brushes against John's cheek. The same deep voice echoes everywhere in the house. _We saved him. How's he going to pay back?_. 

Debt. He's in their debt. How's he going to pay back, his mind repeats back to him, terrified. How's he going to pay back?

-

They leave him in the bed.

Every now and then there's a ghost of teeth on his neck, a ghost of touch on his face, but when he opens his eyes he's always alone. After drifting in and out of dreamless sleep for so long it almost feels like it's became an integral part of his existence he jolts awake one day, breathless with the dull throb of his wounds but awake. “Finally,” says the boy sitting next to his head on the bed, pen and a notebook in his hand. He looks like he's been writing for a while – hands sticky with ink, hair in a bun off his face. “Yeah,” says John, because that's the only answer he can come up with. “Yeah.” 

“Cool,” says the boy, and goes back to writing.

-

John dreams about him. Dreams about black hair slipping out of his bun, dreams about his bottomless eyes, dreams about his pink mouth and ink-stained hands. Dreams dreams dreams.

-

The other vampire is –

He's a bigger presence. Taller, physically, but there's something else about him, something that demands respect. John is scared of him, at first, even when the way he touches the other vampire boy (Alex, he introduced himself as, Alexander Hamilton, right) is gentle and loving. Hell, they speak _French_ to each other, what kind of shit. Him being scared of him – it's normal, right. He's a vampire, after all. Looks strong. 

But he makes John crepes and talks to him in his human voice and introduces himself as Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, rapid-fire, voice thick like he's reminiscing, and John chokes on his breakfast and Alex grins at him. 

“Call me Gilbert, please,” says Gilbert, and John says “okay.”

-

It takes – John doesn't know how long it takes. It takes days. Weeks. Months, maybe – he has no idea, but he adjusts.

The vampires aren't that scary, honestly. If there wasn't the – the way they _communicate_ and the teeth, obviously, he wouldn't be able to tell them from humans. 

There's Alex – Alex with his baby face and large eyes and lovely hands and sharp teeth, and then there's Gilbert with his voice and the haunted look in his own eyes, his long fingers and the look he gets whenever Alex does something dumb. 

And then there's John. John the blood bag. John the snack. John the, what was it they called him that one time, ah yes, John the _human_. John. Guest in their house. Which makes no sense whatsoever, as if he ever asked them to save him. He feels like one of those juice pouches. Stick a straw in him and drink him empty. John the juice pouch. What a title. 

He asks Gil once, corners him, “why? I was happy to die,” and Gil's face crumbles, eyes glazing over, like he's living through some terrible memory. It's not for him, John knows. It's for someone else. He was saved instead of someone else. He can't get the reason out of Gil no matter how he probes. Can't get him to explain. Alex appears out of nowhere, seemingly smelling Gil's distress, wraps himself around Gil, who presses into him. John suddenly feels like he's intruding. 

Gil always goes for John's arm, goes for the small veins, even when John tries to guide him to his wrist, to his arteries where the blood flow is strong enough for a pulse. “No,” says Gil, “No.” He lets Alex do that – let's him get the dark red blood from his arteries, lets him feed as long as he wants to, but he won't let himself. “Why?” asks John. Gil shrugs. He looks weirdly tiny like this, vulnerable. “Alex needs it more than I do.” John accepts it. Doesn't press, just offers Alex both his wrists like presents for him to pick out the one he likes better.

“Are you two like. Together?” asks John one day. Gil and Alex are cuddled close on the couch, Alex's face pressed into Gil's neck. Alex shrugs. Gil looks thoughtful, like he's not sure. Like he's waiting for something. “Yeah,” says Alex finally, after a long minute passes, “I guess we are.” Gil smiles, kisses the top of his head. 

John nods. It tugs at his heart, their easy affection. Their tangled together fingers. Their wordless communication. Something dangerously close to jealousy curls around throat like rope, heavy and shameful, and way too easy to give into.

-

John never thought he'd like the idea of being immortal.

Most of his life he's actively chased death. Most of his life has been a chase for the heady feeling of just narrowly escaping death. It makes no sense, no sense at all, and yet watching Alex and Gil play fighting on the living room floor, laughing and tickling each other, he wonders what it's like to love someone like that and know that they'll never die, never leave you. 

There's another thing that makes him wonder the same – he'll watch Alex writing, the way he keeps smudging his own writing because he holds the pen incorrectly and the heel of his hand drags over the paper, and he'll wonder what it's like to love something so much you could see yourself doing it forever. 

He wonders. Doesn't let himself wonder what it'd be like to keep almost-dying forever.

-

Alex kisses him after a feeding.

John tries peeling him off of him, tries to stop him, says, “Alex, Alex, wait, Gil -” but he's weak from blood loss and Gil smiles at him from across the room, and John – he lets his body relax, puts his hands in Alex's hair and tugs until Alex is straddling his thighs, chests pressed together and Alex's tongue just barely touching his mouth. 

Alex kisses him breathless, won't stop thanking him afterwards, won't stop touching him, kisses his wrists and his neck and his belly, every place sensitive from vulnerability he can think of, and John shudders and holds him close. His head lolls back and Gil comes to kiss him then, soft and gentle, all lips and tongue and stubble. No teeth. John tries to kiss him back but a forceful _no_ comes off Gil, that same everywhere voice he still hasn't gotten used to, and when John flinches a gentler, softer _baby just relax you're so pretty, relax relax relax_. John stops trying to kiss back, lets his mouth go lax, and it makes him feel disgusting but Gil makes a happy noise and licks into his mouth, hands cupping the base of his skull to keep his head from tipping too far back. _Sweet lovely boy_ comes from Gil and then a thinner, squeakier _love you love you love you_ from Alex. 

John tries to lift his hand to touch Alex's face but finds his body too heavy. He drifts drifts drifts.

-

And he loves them. He does. His traitorous brain keeps telling him that maybe it's something in their fangs, something that makes him like this, easy for them to feed out of, a soft, pliable snack that won't fight back, that will take anything they give him and thank them for it, but he _knows_ that's not it. It's not. He loves them. They saved him, how could he not?

-

The difference is that where Alex puts his hands on him with purpose, Gilbert doesn't. Alex will touch him like he's braille and Alex doesn't know how to read him, gentle but hungry, soft, bones sharp under the skin. John lets his eyes flutter closed and Alex traces the shape of one, the sharp softness of his fingertip a gentle pressure on the edges of his eye, fascination vibrating off of him. One slip and I'm blind, he thinks, and shudders. One slip. He'll give Alex that one slip. He'll give him anything. He's delirious with his touch. He'll give him anything for a forever of his fingers on his face.

Gil will – he will make sure that Alex keeps himself in check. He'll touch John like he's scared he'll break, gentle gentle gentle, always careful. He won't give into his hunger. He's nice to him, nice to Alex, even when he's dragging him off John by his hair and yelling at him for being so careless he's still gentle. 

Alex is tender too. He's sharp, yes, and quick, but he never touches him when he's angry, never hits him. John has to beg him for bruises and even then Alex sucks on his own bottom lip until John's on his knees and crying for it, and then Gil will do it for him anyway, will wrestle him, will pretend that it's a fair fight but they both know it could never be. Gil is strong, he's tall, he's an immortal fucking creature, and John is vulnerable and soft compared to him. At the end of each fight John rolls away with bruised ribs and knuckles, tender all over, and by the time he gathers enough strength to lift his head Alex will be kissing Gil's knuckles. Licking, sometimes. There's something there that John doesn't know how to define – something protective, something self-deprecating on Gil's part – on Alex's, too, to a certain extent, but with Gil it rolls off of him in waves. It's not the same with Alex. More subtle. Alex traces the outline of Gil's lips and Gil opens his mouth just enough that Alex's fingers slip into his mouth. John still feels like an outsider at times like these, sore and full of adrenaline.

They won't feed from him right after fights. Something about the adrenaline, he thinks, one part that and one part guilt. Alex drags him on top of himself, asks him to squish him and John lies down, chest to chest, Alex's breath little puffs against his neck. Gil refuses to look at him afterwards but he'll pet his hair, braid it, sometimes, and he'll let John wrap his fingers around his throat, won't squeeze but John will still close his eyes and float, confined by Gil's beautiful hand, so good, beautiful, perfect. John takes a nap and wakes up to Alex nosing his wrist, and John just offers it to him, still sleep-heavy. 

Alex sucks a bruise into the inside of his wrist. His body heat is all John can feel, his body heat and his body and his teeth. Alex licking over the bruise, Alex sinking his teeth into the artery he finds there. John sobs, overwhelmed, and Gil noses down his face, down his neck. He presses his nose into the dip of his collar bones, mouth open against his throat. John presses his wrist up up up, against Alex's mouth, hard, and Alex makes a pleased noise so close to a chirp it startles John. _Gentle gentle gentle_ rolls off of Gil in waves and Alex whimpers, sucks hard. _Slow down_ and Alex sobs but he does, he eases up a little bit, and John starts crying. “Do it do it do it do it, Alex, please please please,” longs for it suddenly, an ache that ignites something in his bones he never knew he could feel, a desire so deep it borders on a need, and Alex makes a pained noise, adds pressure for a second, fangs digging in until they touch bone and John doesn't know what do with himself. “Turn me please Alex I love you, want to be with you forever, please please please --”

Gil pulls Alex off. Alex, Guinness eyes glazed over, blood dripping down his chin, and Gil, sugar and cinnamon, holding him back. John rolls over, tears streaming down his face, cries until he can't breathe.

-

Blunt teeth on Alex's throat, Alex giggling, a breathy sound and John can't stop, nuzzles into his neck right below his jaw, and Alex puts all ten fingers into his hair to keep him there. Beautiful beautiful beautiful. There's a certain vulnerability factor that's missing from this, panic that makes it so good, John knows, but he just wants to give back. Wants to be good. Wants Alex to feel good. He owes them and he wants to give and give and give until he's empty, out of things to give. Gil appears next to him, twists his hands into Alex's hair. John's teeth skirt the soft, vulnerable flesh of the bottom of Alex's jaw and Alex shivers. He still thinks he's more human than he is, keeps flinching away from John's nails and squirms into the blankets of their bed when Gil uses his nails on him. It's because he was turned, Gil explains, and because he was turned such a short time ago, it still hasn't hit. Immortality hasn't hit yet. Alex sticks out his tongue. His teeth are very sharp. His tongue is very soft. John can't restrain himself, kisses him hard.

Each night John traces the marks littering his arms, his wrists, his thighs, and wonders if he enjoys being their walking bloodbag too much to be turned. Surely he could have made them do it if he really wanted it – they're vampires, after all. It's in their nature. Can't be that hard to manipulate them into it. There's something in him telling him that he should be disgusted with himself but he can't find it in himself. Alex comes to wrap himself around his body, sweet and soft from a recent feeding, warm and pliable. John fits himself against his body, slots his leg between Alex's thighs. Gil appears a few moments later, his body an easy fit around John, tall and skinny, all ribs and hip bones. John scoots back into him, pulls Alex back with himself. 

John's blood sings for them, always for them.

-

“Turn me,” pleads John. Alex lunges at him immediately, mouth already open, but Gil puts his hand on the back of Alex's neck. “No,” he says. Alex whines, high and long, and John's heart breaks. He's hungry, he knows, they both are, and it's not fair to bait him like this, not now. Gil leaves the room, comes back a second later with a rabbit. It's still trembling, barely alive but afraid. Alex sinks his teeth into its neck, no hesitation, and his eyes fall closed immediately. John looks away.

Gil decides that they need to go hunting. John doesn't say anything even though he knows what that means – means that Alex is getting weak again and John can't keep him alive anymore. Means that Gil doesn't trust Alex with John anymore. Means that Gil doesn't trust John anymore. It's fair, John knows, but it hurts, still, he misses Alex, misses his teeth and his mouth on him. 

They come back a few hours later, Alex's lips still bloodslick with red dark enough to look black in the dim light of the kitchen. He's bouncier, more alert, eyes bright, and he locks himself in the study immediately. John shakes his head, knows he's there to write whatever it is that keeps him awake, that keeps him alive, that he loved enough to give up his humanity. He said that once, said “I was running out of time to write everything I wanted to so I made myself more time.” John had stopped to wonder if it was really that simple. Alex, human Alex, twenty years old and already feeling like he was running out of time, deciding to turn himself into a monster. Human Alex, twenty years old, brave and stubborn. Somehow he convinced Gil to turn him, Gil who won't even consider letting Alex do it to John. Gil. Gil Gil beautiful Gil. He half-smiles at John when they make eye contact. There's something dark in his eyes, something that should make John uncomfortable but just makes him hungry. Gil notices, of course, like he always does, lets him straddle his hips and kiss him until the tangy copper of Gil's tongue and his own hunger for blood is all John can taste.

-

“Promise me you'll never leave me,” whimpers John. Alex looks up at him as best as he can from where his teeth are buried to the hilt in his thigh, makes a muffled sound around his mouthful of flesh, both hands coming to pet John's belly. He's too out of it to think of anything coherent to say but there's words coming out of him, unfocused and blurred together.

 _Mine mine mine perfect baby never mine mine mine_ , and then, from somewhere in the house, Gil - 

_never leave you baby love you_.

-

They go out to hunt. “Be back in a few hours,” says Alex, who still talks to John sometimes. John kisses them both and lets Gil nose down his throat, lets Alex press dry kisses all over his face.

They slip into the night. John goes to sleep.

-

And just like that they leave him.

Alex in his blood. Gil –

Gil. 

Everywhere. 

John thumbs at the edges of his orbital bone, thinks about Alex's fingers on him. Thinks about his hands. Thinks about his inky eyes. Thinks about Gil's soft lips on his throat.

-

He still owes them. They'll come back for him. They'll come back from the dead. From the undead. From the -

The record skips. The song changes. John keeps waiting.

_Baby you're cruel to me..._

-

“You said you'd never leave me you promised -”

-

“Alex please Alex –“

-

“Gil I promise I won't ask you again I promise come back --”

-

Months pass. They said _never_. John's having trouble remembering Gil's voice, the way it felt in his bones.

-

“I still owe you, I still owe you --”

-

He runs out of food.

There's the rabbits, outside, he remembers dully, but he knows he won't be able to eat them, won't be able to kill them. 

It – it doesn't matter. He pushes it to the back of his mind. Doesn't think about it too much.

-

John lets the rabbits go.

It feels like the right thing to do, somehow – let the poor things go if no one's going to eat them. He trembles the whole way to them, knees shaking. His fingers slip twice when he tries to open the latch, but finally it slips open, (open open open he's so – dizzy, suddenly). John screams his voice hoarse and the bunnies disappear into the forest. 

John collapses onto the wet ground and tries to breathe.

-

Gil and Alex don't come back.

-

John –

He goes into the kitchen. Gets a glass of water. His hands won't stop shaking. His legs won't stop shaking. 

Then suddenly there's glass everywhere. Water. He must have dropped his glass, he knows, rationally, but he can't remember how it happened. It's beautiful, he thinks distantly, the glass. Like diamonds.

And then he's going down down down down.

-

He comes back.

-

He comes back.

-

He -

-

Someone's crying.

John's body feels heavy. Numb. He tries to lift his hand to comfort whoever it is that's crying but his arms are too heavy. 

Something about this feels eerily familiar, the cotton ball feeling in his head and the post-drowning ache in his lungs, but there's something else – something weird, something heavier keeping his limbs down. A hunger in his bones.

“John,” whimpers Alex, and it's – it's Alex, and John's throat closes up. “Alex,” he tries to say, but it comes out as a croak, and Alex pets his face with both hands and shushes him, but John just shakes his head, swallows.

“Now I owe you again, now you have to keep me,” he whispers, and Alex chokes on a sob. 

John slips back under.

-

Gil is there when he wakes up the second time, when he wakes up properly.

“Hi,” says Gil, silk soft and John, still half-awake and bleary-eyed, makes grabby hands in his general direction until Gil lies down on top of him. “What happened,” mumbles John into Gil's neck, and Gil goes quiet and John goes “hmmm” and then Gil starts to cry. 

And John knows. 

Knows he did more than get himself into more vampire debt.

-

He finally manages to get out of bed a few days later, and Alex kisses his face until he's half-laughing half-crying and then he wraps his body around him until he calms down a little. John kisses him and Gil stares at them, a fond look on his face.

-

“Hungry,” comments Alex. John's trembling with how hard he's trying to hold himself back, trying to keep himself from attacking, blood still on his lips and mouth and hands. Gil's got his arms locked behind his back with his own hands, an iron grip, and John can't stop trashing in it.

 _Shh,_ Gil not-quite says, and John screams, loud and angry. Alex giggles. Gil glares at him. “Shut up,” he says, “you were the exact same right after you were turned.” Alex shuts his mouth. His face turns sour. John breathes heavily, tries to calm himself down. 

His bones ache. He feels like his body is eating itself out of starvation, like he's dying. Alex is standing just out of his reach and for a second John's grateful that he's not human, because he knows that if he was he would be dead. He knows he would have killed him. The thought hurts like a physical blow, and Alex realizes, gets a gentle look on his face. John closes his eyes, breathes harshly. Alex's hand comes close to his face but he won't touch.

He fed – two people, they killed two people, plenty for the three of them even with John needing more than Alex and Gil, being freshly turned. He shouldn't be hungry anymore, Gil keeps telling him, keeps telling him to let it pass, to focus on what blood he did have, not on what he didn't. Thinking too much of the things he didn't kill will only hurt him, Alex says. John tells them both to shut the fuck up. He's already hurting. He's so hungry he feels like he's about to die. 

Gil wrestles him into the ground, eventually, locks him down, makes John whimper and scream until it passes.

-

Gil still gets that haunted look on his face. He refuses to tell John what exactly happened, refuses to let him thank him, but John keeps kissing him and saying “love you love you Gil, I love you,” and Gil holds him tight and so does Alex and they let him have most of what they catch even when they're hungry, and John tries to not take it all but he's so hungry, gets so desperate. He'll cry afterwards, apologize, and Gil will pet his back and say “sh, honey, it's fine,” and Alex will crack a smile and say that he was getting fat anyway. John doesn't think it's funny, he kisses Alex's belly and thighs with determination, begs him to not say things like that, tells him that he loves him so much that it almost killed him. It's a low blow but Alex stops.

He still feels bad, though, for being a burden. At least before he could offer them something. Now he's only taking, too clumsy and inexperienced to really hunt with them. Alex ruffles his hair, calls him a baby, and John lunges at him, teeth bared and knocks him down onto the floor, wrestles him until his eyes glaze over and Gil drags them both up. 

“That won't help anymore, baby,” says Alex when John offers him his wrist, but John just shakes his head mutely, crawls closer to Alex's body. Alex takes his wrist into his mouth, careful, gentle, and sinks his teeth in. 

It's not the same. Alex doesn't want it anymore, doesn't want his blood – can't process it properly, he tells him, he can't feed from it. John starts crying. Alex, with great difficulty, retracts his fangs and bites him again, and it's a blunt-teethed bite this time, still not the same, nothing going in and nothing going out, there's no lightheaded numbness from blood loss, but Alex is still biting and John still trembles underneath him.

-

(They come to him.

“I owe you,” he says. “Yes, you do,” says Alex. 

They come to him. 

He won't let them leave.)

**Author's Note:**

> i hope theo cirkne specifically suffers
> 
> maybe ill write more for this verse idk


End file.
